VIDEOS: A tearful farewell from Albany icon Jack McEneny

Assemblyman Jack McEneny is interviewed by Channel 6 news crew on his last day in the State Assembly.(Mike McMahon / The Record)

ALBANY -- For the last time over 20 years, John "Jack" McEneny walked up to lectern and struck the gavel at noon Monday, closing the 2012 Assembly session and ending 20 years as a state legislator.

There is rarely anyone present for these abbreviated sessions, held to keep the Assembly from being inactive for more than three consecutive days, and so requiring the governor's intervention to reconvene. A tradition he has kept, even on weekends, McEneny's final gaveling in, prayer, pledge, and colloquy to longtime friend and absent Assemblyman Ron Canestrari was attended by friends and family. As McEneny stepped off the dais for the final time, a bagpiper struck up a tune amidst applause, and tears in the legislator's eyes.

Since he took office in 1992, McEneny has struck the gavel some 2,700 times, by his own estimation. As he noted in an interview prior to leaving for the Assembly chambers, it was his initial campaign for the Albany county legislature that polished his name and prepared him for the victory that would send him to the Assembly.

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After entering public service in 1965, McEneny rose through the ranks of Mayor Erastus Corning's administration, rising to Director of Human Resources, a position where, McEneny estimated, he hired some 12,000 people, but by the time he he began his campaign for county legislature, that positive publicity was nine years past. Instead, the public had a greater awareness of McEneny's affiliation with former County Executive Jim Coyne, under whom he worked as deputy county executive between 1989 and 1991.

"As I took the job with Coyne the indictment was pending and so I had gotten a lot of publicity on that, but for the most part associated with something that was a negative," McEneny said. Coyne was eventually sentenced to 46 months in federal prison for bribery and bank fraud.

While he was coming off a successful tenure as chief-of-staff to Assembly man Richard Connor, the Pine Hills Democrat was hampered by his affiliation with Coyne, his inexperience, and his lack of funds.

"We didn't have a postage stamp, we didn't have a paid ad - everything was volunteers, door to door," McEneny said. "I had never taken petitions, and I had never really organized visibly as a campaign manager. I got a quick education the hard way; I didn't even know about walksheets. Con sequently, I visited every house, including the Republicans, for a primary."

In the controversial and extended primary, McEneny lost to Democratic Majority Leader Richard Meyers, prompting a legendary write-in campaign that saw McEneny's campaign sending out detailed voter guides on how to cast a write-in and rubber stamps to help guarantee the correct spelling of "McEneny." He won the county seat and, riding the wave of publicity created by his campaign, slid into the Assembly seat vacated by Connors, his former mentor, the following year, even though he was outspent two-to-one by opponent Helen DesFosses.

Now, on the other end of the intervening two decades, the departing Assemblyman can count among his accomplishments the authoring of more than 100 bills which became law. The Veterans' Bill of Rights, a provision to allow the use of rubber stamps in write-in elections, land additions to the Pine Bush Preserve, and school board reforms.

On Monday, though, it was a law establishing on regulations for home day cares that came to his mind.

"I know it saved lives from conversations with people who were asked to take that one extra kid beyond what they were authorized" McEneny said. "Now we've cracked down on that, so I know it had an effect on human behavior."

Their are experiences that have stayed with him, such as a vocal and passionate debate on the chamber floor over a death penalty bill during the transition from Gov. Mario Cuomo to George Pataki

"Pataki had promised to sign it, so the debate went from four in the afternoon until four in the morning with no dinner," McEneny reminisced.

The debate was exciting for the legislature because, given the governor's promise of a signature, their debate had great import, especially for McEneny, a strong opponent of the death penalty.

But for one of Irish heritage, there are few memories as poignant as those from his journey to Northern Ireland as part of President Clinton's peacemaking contingent in 1995.

"It was a thrill to come home with the President, considering we left during the (potato) famine," McEneny said. Given his roots in the Irish community and the friends he has made throughout his political career, it was fitting that McEneny's final departure from the Assembly chambers as an office holder was to a piper playing the traditional Irish tune "The Parting Glass," often sung at the parting of friends.

As for who will now gavel-in and gavel-out the Assembly on weekends, holidays, and vacations? McEneny has tapped freshman Assemblymembers Patricia Fahy, his successor, and John McDonald, former Mayor of Cohoes, to take over the tradition. As to specifics of that arrangement, he said that is something he plans to "let them work out;" the departing Assemblyman is anticipating devoting more time to reading, writing, and to spending time with his family.